--- title: "PhobosLab" url: https://daily.dev/posts/phoboslab-46ax4iw1k source_url: https://phoboslab.org/log/2026/08/xibalba64-making-of type: article source: "Hacker News" published: 2026-08-06T10:11:38.724Z updated: 2026-08-06T15:51:30.736Z tags: ["game-development", "gaming", "c"] reading_time: 15 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # PhobosLab **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Dominic Szablewski details how he built Xibalba 64, a Wolfenstein 3D-style FPS for the Nintendo 64, published as a physical cartridge by Modretro for their M64 console. He covers porting his C game engine (high_impact) to the N64 using Libdragon and Tiny3D, the hardware quirks of the RDP/RSP coprocessors, raycasting-based visibility, texture batching to work within the N64's 4 KB texture memory limit, achieving a stable 60 FPS, audio compression using VADPCM, and the publishing process with Modretro. The post includes code snippets for key data structures and practical advice on dev tooling including emulators and the SummerCart64 flash cart. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 106 comments across hackernews, lobsters (as of 2026-08-06). **TL;DR:** Commenters are genuinely impressed by the technical depth of building an N64 FPS from scratch, with lively side discussions about retro dev tooling and the modern homebrew ecosystem — though a vocal minority raises concerns about the publisher ModRetro's ties to Palmer Luckey and Anduril Industries. **Sentiment:** 55% positive · 25% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - Modern toolchains (Libdragon, Tiny3D, SummerCart64) have made fifth-gen homebrew development far more accessible than it used to be. - The Libdragon library has advanced significantly, now enabling capabilities beyond original N64 games like bump mapping and seamless overworld loading. - The author's approach of using raycasting only for visibility while rendering geometry as textured polygons is a clever technical solution. - Physical cartridge publishing for new homebrew games is still viable and there is a real market of buyers who prefer cartridges over ROMs. - The N64's boot code lockout is now circumvented via GPU-accelerated hash collision brute-forcing, a neat community achievement. **The pushback** - ModRetro is funded by and closely tied to Palmer Luckey's Anduril Industries, which makes autonomous military weapons systems. - Current cartridges only support NTSC N64s, excluding PAL users (though a fix is reportedly planned). - The N64's hardware is not well-suited for raycaster-style games or 2D rendering, making this a harder-than-necessary platform choice. - The ROM is not available for purchase separately — only as a physical cartridge. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Broadly enthusiastic about the technical writeup and the state of retro homebrew tooling, with a significant sub-thread debating ModRetro/Palmer Luckey's arms industry ties and a separate tangent about modern vs. classic gaming. - lobsters (mixed): No comments were present, so no community signal is available. **Hottest debate:** Whether ModRetro's connection to Palmer Luckey and Anduril Industries makes supporting the publisher ethically problematic. **Open questions** - Will the ROM ever be made available digitally, without requiring a physical cartridge purchase? - How does the game perform on PAL N64 hardware, and when will PAL-compatible cartridges be available? - What is the realistic sales volume for new homebrew titles on a niche platform like the M64? **Highlights** > Related to this, every ROM needs a "boot loader" that has to be signed and is verified by the lockout chip. Nintendo's boot code is under copyright and thus cannot be used. So the boot code distributed with Libdragon is signed by finding a hash collision with a brute force tool running on the GPU[1]. Fun stuff! [1] https://github.com/DragonMinded/libdragon/tree/trunk/boot#bu... > — [phoboslab on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49196240) > All geometry is rendered as textured polygons. The raycasting step only determines visibility. But yes, the N64 isn't particularly well suited for this type of game (or anything 2D, really). I didn't know that when I started the project. > — [phoboslab on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49195748) > Libdragon has been improved massively in the past year or so, there are now simple demo games that show capabilities far beyond the original N64 games (bump mapping textures, HDR, seamless loading of massive overworld maps, etc.) Really talented core team, fun to give them a follow. Demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP8g2ngHftY > — [Mizza on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49195693) > The whole point of Anduril is to create autonomous weapon systems that can kill people autonomously without human involvement. When you look at interviews and speeches that Palmer Luckey has given, they are always deeply unsettling. In a 2024 speech, he said "Societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom." ( https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/palmer-luckey-every-countr... ). He's said in a Bloomberg interview that "there are actually things I would like to build that the DoD would not use and would not deploy, that they do think are beyond the pale" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLFpYha6Wc ), and he's said in an Axios interview that he would be willing to build nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons "in a specific vertical". He elaborates by saying that it's a huge mistake that the US military isn't allowed to use tear gas in combat. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZfW3YTJ5Eg ) > — [ndiddy on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49197175) > Hmmm look, I can offer you my perspective on this. I've been a low level engine programmer in video games all my working life. I worked on a few AAA games that sold 20M+ copies, I'm not saying this to boast, I'm saying this to say I know how the sausage is made. My literal day to day job is fixing issues like "The RHI thread on the Switch takes 0.5ms longer than it should" and optimizing things as much as possible. I think if you asked me few years ago, I would have also taken the same stance you did - that these tools make it "too easy" and we get unoptimized crap out there. But you know what, nowadays I feel like I mellowed out a lot. A lot of these so called "friendslop" games are horrible in terms of technical work. And you know what? They still bring joy to people. They still make people laugh and have a great time with the people they like. One of my favourite memories from a game I worked on was reading comments from people who said they were looking forward to just playing the game after work in the evening with their friends. Was optimizing the IO performance on PS4 essential to make the game happen? Sure. But what mattered more was that the game was actually fun to play. Nowadays I see the improvement in tooling as nothing but a positive. There will always be hardcore engine programmers who know how to do this stuff, I have zero doubt about it. But allowing people to just download an engine and make the thing is absolutely fantastic. To say that it's bad - to me personally - that's gatekeeping. Saying you can't make a game unless you know how to write a renderer or a physics system is so offputting to people who want to make a game but just don't know how - we should be encouraging them, not chastising them for it. Little Big Planet did it well as one of the first games of that kidn, if you recall that - just saying, here's a sandbox, make a thing that brings joy to other people. Isn't that what gaming is about? And on a more serious, business side - it's kinda crazy that Epic lets you use UE for FREE until you start making serious money on the game that you made. You can start a company, hire people, and just start making the game you want to make without paying anything for the tooling. Very few other companies in the world let you do this. > — [gambiting on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49196217) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49168622) · 310 points · 106 comments - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/j8ytwa/how_make_nintendo_64_game_2026) · 1 points · 0 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [www.happydaze.se](https://daily.dev/posts/www-happydaze-se-dxnvxkply) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Writing An Open-World Engine For The Nintendo 64](https://daily.dev/posts/writing-an-open-world-engine-for-the-nintendo-64-hn7blvchl) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#gaming](https://daily.dev/tags/gaming), [#c](https://daily.dev/tags/c) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/phoboslab-46ax4iw1k)